


Just Leave Me Here

by orphan_account



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Everyone Needs A Hug, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Sad, Slow Burn, Teacher AU, george needs so much love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29271606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: People tell you that when you get out of school and get a real job, your life is truly beginning. They act like a switch gets pushed on in your brain and you suddenly know what to do. But it isn't like that. Sometimes it feels like you’re still stuck at waiting for when everything will start to make sense and you’re just stuck in an endless limbo of not knowing.Or: George is a struggling teacher, trying to get through things without breaking.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs/Sapnap (implied)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Just Leave Me Here

**Author's Note:**

> hi :) i decided to give the teacher au a try !!

People tell you that when you get out of school and get a real job, your life is truly beginning. They act like a switch gets pushed on in your brain and you suddenly know what to do. But it isn't like that. Sometimes it feels like you’re still stuck at waiting for when everything will start to make sense and you’re just stuck in an endless limbo of not knowing. So as George pulls his sweater over his head and rubs his eyes, it all just feels pointless. And maybe it is. Maybe it doesn’t matter and he shouldn’t even show up. Maybe they won’t even care. But he shakes his head and straightens up. Of course they’ll care. He accepted the job. And he’s going to do it. He has to. 

He already feels out of place when he steps into the empty classroom. He pulls his things out of his bag and sets them onto his desk. It all feels too empty. And he has days to make it look like he put effort into something for once in his life, but it still feels pointless. So he pulls his desk chair towards the wall and makes the best of things. The stapler doesn’t want to work and thumbtacks shouldn’t hurt this much but they do. They pinch and poke into his skin and he doesn’t want to do this anymore. But he keeps going because he has to. He has to. 

It still looks shitty when he decides he’s done. It looks like a classroom with a few cheap posters stuck to the walls. And that’s what it is really. George can’t bother with anything else, so he puts on a smile and locks the door behind him as he leaves. He passes empty display cases and notice boards decorated with empty pages of paper. There’s a loud, throaty laugh coming from an open room and George takes the time to look in as he passes by. A man wearing dark green boots and a purple flannel over a teal t-shirt, is covering his mouth, scuffing his toe against the floor.

“No, no, I’m serious, Jacobs. Once the school year starts, you will not be doubting me.” Another voice sounds and George pulls away, starting back down the hall. A private moment was what he had just stumbled upon. He exhales shakily and shoves his hands into his pockets, keys jangling around his neck. He’s staring down at his feet until he knocks into someone and he finds himself sprawled across the floor, staring up at a cracked ceiling. 

“I’m so sorry, that was my fault. I don’t think my glasses have the right lenses in them. Everything’s blurry.” A hand extends toward George and he takes it gingerly, pulling himself up. “I’m really really sorry. Oh my goodness, that was a bad first impression, I promise I’m not always like this.”

“I’m fine, I wasn’t watching where I was going anyway.” George winces as he flexes his knee and the man looks concerned, scrunching up his face. He feels bad for making him worry. He is fine, really. He wants to get out of there. He needs to get out of there, but sometimes things are never as easy as you wish they could be. So he lets himself be dragged away from the exit. His exit. Where he could go home and sit until he’d have to teach English to a group of teenagers. But no, he gets pulled into an office where someone concludes that he’s fine and sends him off when he already knew that. It wasn’t even a bad fall. George ducks out of the man's grasp and hurries back down to his exit, away from where he’ll be chained down soon enough. 

___________

Everything about the place he calls _home_ is small. It’s a cramped space with three rooms. A kitchen-living room-dining room crossover, a bathroom and a bedroom. It’s tiny and barely holding up as the walls creak and the rug is frayed. The mold in the bathroom starts to crawl up the wall whenever the pipes leak and the sink doesn’t work half the time you try to turn it on. And the fridge smells stale and the couch has scraped over the floor too many times to count and he stands in the doorway, staring at the rubbish bags piled up in one corner, slowly spilling into the next, he can’t do this. But he has to. So he does. 

The plastic take-out box sits on the counter, the food inside growing cold as George types away at his horribly slow laptop. Every time he has to backspace everything freezes and the fan is filling his ears with white noise.

It all feels endless. Like he’s trudging through a never ending loop of this middle place. This middle passage between the unknown and the life he has ahead of him. And that life is slowly slipping through his grasp. The sand is falling through the hourglass and soon enough he’ll be stuck. And sometimes it already feels like he’s drowning in it. The time ticks on the plastic clock, nailed to the wall, counting down the minutes he has until he’ll fall asleep, stomach empty, mind buzzing. It happens most nights. Where he has dinner for breakfast and an ache in his back for the rest of the day. 

He falls asleep on the table. And he dreams of milky galaxies and soft, yellow stars that crumble between his fingertips as he dances among them. It’s happy, until he hops to every star and they all fall apart and he’s left in darkness. So he starts to fall through space and he’s _falling_ and _falling_ until he sees solid ground and he wakes up in a cold sweat, crying. 

He hasn’t cried in years.

The coffee in mis mug tastes bitter, but there’s no milk left to soften it. He cuts his tongue on the sharp edge of the ceramic that he forgot he had chipped. He trips on an uneven tile in the kitchen. He turns the shower on and the hot water runs cold too quickly. He turns the sink taps but they’re rusted too tightly and he has to turn on the too-cold shower again to wash his hands. He slips his metro card in his wallet and misses the only train for the next hour. He has no money for a cab and his phone has no data left so he doesn’t know how far the walk might be. But he braves the unknown and wanders across broken bits of glass and burnt out cigarettes. 

The halls still seem so eerily silent. It feels like things hush around him as he walks. It’s an orientation day for him. He found that funny. Being a teacher and still having to do orientation. Having to be the one toured around the school. He remembers his time at school. Shitty days of crying in bathroom stalls and drawing with sharpie on his hands. He remembers his orientation day at high school. He got left behind. George always gets left behind. 

The man waiting for him at the office has blonde hair. He’s drumming his fingers on the front desk, shuffling through some papers. His shirt is cuffed around his wrists and he’s wearing jeans. George doesn’t say anything the whole time they walk. Nothing stands out and he can’t remember anything by the time they finish. Where was the library again? The science wing? His fucking classroom? He can’t remember. Ne never remembers. He can hear the sound of talking. To him. 

“Huh?” George asks, raising his head. The man raises an eyebrow and all George can focus on is a small stain of green on the white of his shirt collar. Paint or pen. He could see him fiddling with paints, brushing softly over a white canvas. 

“Did you hear anything I said?” His smile is warm, but George can’t feel anything but _cold_. He wants to feel the warmth. But it all feels like winter in his mind. “You with me?” And he realizes he’s been horribly silent and shut off. 

_Shrug_ . And the silence is threatening to swallow them whole as they stare at the ground in the middle of the hallway. It’s awkward and all George wants is a redo. A rip in the barrier of time that sits so heavily on everyone’s shoulders so that he can slip through to go back. But he can’t, so the silence stops threatening and bites down, _swallowing_ . “Well, I teach math? If that- um, if that makes this less weird.” It doesn’t. It just makes it more _weird_ because now George feels as if he needs to ask questions. Talk about what he’s going to teach. But he doesn’t want to. 

But the man isn’t moving and he’s expecting something, so George has to. “I’m teaching English, I guess.” But the conversation is still stuck on a hill and there’s nothing to push it down. Nothing to start it rolling, it’s just perched on a ledge, waiting to fall but it’s horribly stuffy and awkward and it won’t come. Nothing will. So he plows it forward himself in the way he only does when the words start to tumble out of his mouth and then he can’t stop. “I’m George. I’m twenty-five and I hate the color yellow. I hate heights but I live in an apartment with a balcony. I rant about everything. I talk to myself because sometimes I don’t have anyone else. I’m a massive hypochondriac. I can’t feel anything without being scared that something’s wrong. I hate movies because they’re too long and I can never finish TV shows. I live alone. I moved here when I got out of university in England. I’m red, green colorblind and I wish I could see a sunset properly. People tell me they’re pretty." he pauses, staring up and swallowing back his words. "I’m- I- sorry, I lost myself.” _Fuck_. He hasn’t done that in ages. When he would talk and talk and talk about nothing. If he hadn’t caught himself, he’d go for hours just spilling nonsense from his mouth. 

The man cocks his head to the side, eyebrows knitted together. He smiles, but not unkindly. He looks more bemused than anything. He steps forward slightly, hands shoved in his pockets. He hums and George feels his face set aflame. “That was- hm.” He turns and motions for George to follow him. He does. What else can he do? They get to a classroom. Desks set up, eerily empty. “Tell me more.” George blinks. No one has told him to _tell them more_. It’s always been to stop telling them. Stop talking. Stop going on about nothing. But it's never been more. 

“More?” 

“Yes, more. You’re interesting. Better than sitting at my desk for hours. People around here call me Dream by the way. Even the kids. So, yeah, tell me more.” There’s a strange kind of silence for a moment as George collects his bearings. It’s not a bad one. Just strange. He perches himself on the edge of one of the small, wooden desks and starts to talk. About everything and nothing. It’s refreshing honestly as he talks about colors and ideas and books and comics and music and food and art. With this person he’s barely known for an hour. But he listens, leaning his head in his hand, eyes trained on George the whole time as he spills poetry from his lips. Bursts of song from his tongue. He’s exciting and _mesmerizing_. 

“What about you?” George asks when he pulls himself up out of his tale of spun words. Dream stares, eyes unblinking. He shakes his head, pulling at the tie around his neck. “Come on, I had my turn. What about you?” George feels almost _bolder_. Like something has been lifted off his back and set into his chest. The man sitting across from him shifts, curling his hands in his lap.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just tell me anything.” 

“Well, um, people started calling me Dream when I was a kid, I guess. My parents said I was a day-dreamer. It just started from there. I teach algebra to the freshman and I’ve been here for three years. The only friends I have are the other teachers here. I have a cat named Patches. My younger sister comes over to my apartment way too much. I come home from work and she’s always just _there_. I hate winter. It’s too cold. Not enough sun. I think green is my favorite color. I’m twenty-three, I went to community college. I-” he takes a breath, giving George a small smile. “I guess I have more to say than I thought.” 

“Not a bad thing,” and it’s not because George knows that words are what bring people together. Poetry and dance woven through thoughts and falling from minds, stuck with so much weight to bear. The way words can be pulled and stitched together to create stories. A way to escape the world around them. They pull people towards each other. Creates magnets. 

His laptop whirrs and he tries to ignore it, but the sound is too much so he closes it. But now, everything is too quiet. Much too quiet and he’s alone in his shitty, poster-covered classroom. The windows are covered and the sun is streaming in through one crack in the side, spilling a beam of sunlight across the floor. He can hear voices around him. Other teachers maybe. He was never good at making friends. So maybe the one person he’s talked to so far- maybe- no, no. He’s, what? Twenty-six? There’s no time for shit like that. They wouldn’t want it anyway. 

There’s shuffling outside of his door, before a knock sounds. George pulls himself up and rubs his eyes, pulling open the door. Dream stands there, bag slung over his shoulder. 

“I was just leaving, but I wanted to know if you were gonna be here for the rest of the week?” He looks hopeful. George shrugs and he grins. “Cool, uh, I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you around.” And it feels like the thorns of song that snagged on his tongue and pulled them together have spun them closer once again. The spinning wheel with threads of words has sewn a bridge and maybe, _maybe_ this can be something George can fall back onto. It would be a relief. But that unwavering feeling of anxiety is still there. Because what if he fucks it up? It wouldn’t be the first time he messes up something beautiful. But this time, he’s ready for this. He has a solid job for the first time in years. His house is falling apart, but- maybe he’ll be ok. His mind is jumbled lately, but it’s all just stress. He’ll be ok. He’s survived worse. He’s lonely sometimes, but that’s normal. Once everything gets going, he won’t even have to worry. He’ll be fine. _Fine. Fine. Fine._

**Author's Note:**

> yee


End file.
